Vivo has the first phone with a fingerprint scanner under the screen

Stuffing a fingerprint scanner under the screen of a smartphone has been a highly rumored feature for a while now, with tons and tons of companies filing for patents and testing the concept out. We’ve never seen it in a commercial device, but Vivo has finally closed in on making that a reality.

At CES, Vivo showed off a screen with a fully functional in-display fingerprint scanner, and it’s ready for mass production, with a few small catches.

The biggest one is that this is only going to work in an OLED panel. Since the fingerprint scanner is below the screen, the reader itself has to peek through the pixels of an OLED display to capture and verify an image of your fingerprint. An LCD’s backlight would block this from working, so we’re realistically only going to see this in devices that would already be going for an OLED screen. Sorry, budget phones.

There’s also probably going to be supply issues at first, at least until someone like Samsung or LG can figure it out. Vivo says these are ready for mass production, but that probably doesn’t mean they’ll be ready for a phone that ships millions like the Galaxy Note 9. In a couple years, though, this is almost definitely happening.

Born in southern Alabama, Jared spends his working time selling phones and his spare time writing about them. The Android enthusiasm started with the original Motorola Droid, but the tech enthusiasm currently covers just about everything. He likes PC gaming, Lenovo's Moto Z line, and a good productivity app.